When downloading/installing software it is often geared towards specific GUIs. I’ll use the one-click install for codecs just as an example. I’m giving LXDE a shot, as my laptop is a few years old, and I don’t care about fanceyness. I never see an option for LXDE though. Is there a seperate supported website…or is there a rule of thumb that I don’t know about, meaning I should always download the software for gnome… whats compatible with this GUI… hopefully my question is clear enough
If you are referring to downloading from openSUSE distribution repos, I found that when testing the later openSUSE 11.3 milestones, KDE apps work well on LXDE. I found this to be true when adding LXDE to a default KDE install that included all the regular apps. On selecting LXDE at login, I got LXDE menu of LXDE plus KDE apps. All the KDE apps I tried including media players ran well on LXDE.
If you install cleanly from DVD by selecting LXDE as the desktop option, you will be able to see how much Gnome stuff is also installed as a result. You may find that downloading and adding Gnome apps will add less package dependencies (i.e. overhead) than the alternative KDE4 apps (not to mention KDE3 apps that might also need KDE3 libraries). However if you have plenty of file system space available, that may not be a concern for you.
You can achieve your preferred mix of apps with LXDE, if you have adequate resources. I don’t think you need to be overly concerned about a rule of thumb.
